


Lying

by Profoundly_Poetic (LinguistLove_24)



Category: No Fandom, Original Work
Genre: Aging, Best Friends, Dark, Death, Disability, Gen, Grandparents & Grandchildren, Grief, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Loss, Original Poetry - Freeform, Other, Physical Disability - Referenced, Poetry, References to Depression
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-07
Updated: 2020-06-07
Packaged: 2021-03-03 22:41:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,861
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24583225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LinguistLove_24/pseuds/Profoundly_Poetic
Summary: Poem about the death of my Nan because it's coming up on three months and I still can't wholly or healthily cope.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 1





	Lying

**Author's Note:**

> I am (barely) still in the land of the living. Hardly post anymore but came across this poem while looking through my archives tonight and definitely had a good cry. I've pretty much given up writing, but for whatever reason was compelled to share this here because I deleted the blog where I used to upload all my poetry and basically made myself disappear from all other social media.

How have I gotten so good at lying?

_Are you okay?_

_**Are you hungry?** _

_What did you do today?_

**_Lean on friends to fill up the empty space._ **

_I’m fine._

_**I already ate.** _

_Deep cleaned the house and read and puttered around all day._

_**I do. They can’t be here, they never really could before either, but I talk to them every day.** _

How have I gotten so comfortable with hiding, holding everything in, retreating, tucking it away?

_I’m dying._

_**I’m starving, but I can hardly think of eating. What does it matter? I haven’t wanted to be here for a long time. Everything is ass backward and belly up anyway.** _

_I did the bare minimum. I’m not a slob. Then I got back into bed and pulled the covers over my head, stayed frozen in a fetal position, cried for hours and slept away the ones where I couldn’t._

_**What friends? Their isolation is temporary. They live in worlds far and away. Aside from sorry, none of them really know what to say. Neither do family, but I wouldn’t expect anyone to completely understand. I’ve always felt burdensome no matter what I do or say. The niceties they’ve laid on so extra thick will stop someday.** _

**_Once they get back to their normal lives and my grief and frustrations and burdens still haven’t gone away._ **

_You have to keep going._

_Just stay positive. It’ll get better._

_I don’t have time._

_There’s nothing I can do,_

they’ll say.

They’ll tell me you’re in a better, more peaceful place, and rattle off the false and empty reasons I have to stay.

I’ll be another thing on their plate, load on their shoulders. There’s no end to the heaviness and these agonizingly cyclical days.

I finally called Pa yesterday.

He’s losing his memory, Nan.

What if I pick up the phone one day and he just forgets me?

I’m just white noise, blank space in his psyche and that god you had so much faith in just takes the recollections of me away from him and he slips away from me?

You were my person. The torch is his now, even if everything feels upside down and different. What if I lose him before you meet again? What if I’m loved but alone - alive but walking dead and unbelonged to anybody? I already feel everything changing, loosening. I’ve been in free fall for a while, but I’m fighting round after round and I just come up losing.

I told Pa that I loved him when I hugged him at the funeral.

I told him yesterday, too. When I was saying goodbye.

He slipped back into the past for a while. Said his brother wasn’t at the service, would be staying with him after Auntie left. I almost died inside.

I went along with it, though. I think you’d be proud of me for that.

You always said I had so much patience. With the young ones and with things you had never learned or didn’t understand.

It’s because I’ve never fit in anywhere. I’ve always felt broken. My body fails me and everybody treated me like I was different. People don’t slow down enough to really take me seriously and listen.

You did.

You knew grandpa was slipping a little before you left.

_It drives me nuts sometimes, the things he forgets._

_“I know, Nan,”_ I said. _“Just help him remember. Let him talk. Don’t argue, don’t get mad.”_

You always listened to that, too.

He told me yesterday how much he’s gonna miss you.

Said that when he goes he just wants to go to sleep and not wake up. He doesn’t want to suffer and he’s glad you didn’t really have to.

I am too. But I’ll never be okay without you.

Mum was here briefly and I told her how bad I wish I were in that damn casket too.

Said I just wanted to take myself to your grave site and sit there with you.

Would you know?

Would you feel me there? Hear me if I just talked mindlessly to you?

Remember when we talked about mediums those few times?

The neighbors have been extra friendly toward me since you died. They offered me food and beer and we sat six feet apart in the halls and drank together the other night.

I didn’t say a lot. Mostly just listened. Got halfway hammered, went back to my apartment and cried.

One of them, though, was talking about mediums and how much her own experiences have given her faith in them.

I don’t know what the hell I believe anymore. I told you as much too. But now that you’re gone, seeing one is the only thing I want to do.

Is there something, somewhere else out there? 

Can you see me?

Do you miss me from wherever you are now as much as I miss you?

I feel like a forlorn calf perpetually bawling for its mother.

My chest feels like it’s continually being pounded and bludgeoned by a sledgehammer.

I wonder so often now if a medium were standing next to me - if you’d come through.

I think you would be disappointed by how much I’m not taking care of myself anymore.

I was holding on for you more than anyone.

If I could concoct a quick, painless, surefire way to die, I already would have done.

_You’re only twenty eight,_ everyone says.

I feel about a hundred and one.

_You have so much life ahead._

Where?

When?

For what?

My whole life has been muddling, plodding through, falling behind, feeling empty and alone, coming up short and never being enough.

I can feel myself ever-so-slowly shutting down, closing off. The brightness and positivity that once was is lost.

You would hate that, Nan. I know you would - but you were my person, my anchor, and now you’re gone.

How do I just go on being without that?

I don’t want to live to ninety or ninety one.

I’ve never felt like I’m meant to get old.

I already feel and carry the weight and the oldness in the depths of my soul.

Maybe I’ll make it to thirty like Patsy Cline.

She was always my favourite.

Thirty’s not that far off. That’d be fine.

I still haven’t changed your contact info in my handset. Every time anyone calls me from Pa’s it still says _Nan_ and it makes me cry.

I don’t have the heart to change it. Why should I?

When did I get so good at and comfortable with lies?

Everyone says agony eases and changes with time.

I don’t believe them.

Neither of us ever fully believed everything happens for a reason, and you know I’ve never truly felt that time or life or fate or god were ever even once on my side.

When did I get so comfortable with lying?

Saying I’m okay when I feel like I’m dying?

Smiling and faking and shutting down just to avoid burdening everyone - asking for one more goddamn thing because there’s too much I cannot do and I just want to avoid crying?

Is it an empath coping mechanism? I feel like I’m always hyper alert and on fire.

You’ve been gone for a handful of days and I’m so bloody, bone deeply tired.

_I love you_ , I said softly yesterday into Pa’s ear.

I couldn’t stop thinking about how hard you struggled to get it out when you last said it to me.

They’d be the last words you’d say that day, the last ones I’d ever hear.

_Same here._ His Irish lilt never sounded so clear.

I felt warm inside. For a millisecond I forgot that you’re not here.

_“Tell Nan I love her too,”_ I almost reminded him.

Then I wondered if heaven were a real place, if that’s where you truly are -

are my thoughts something you can sense or hear?

I hope you do.

I miss you every waking second of every single day I have to stay in this hellhole isolated and heavy, on my own without you.

I wish your god would show some mercy and let me follow suit.

I’d give anything for just five more seconds, five minutes to ask you all the things that I seem to have forgotten to.

There’s still so much I want to say even after ten years of daily phone calls, hours upon hours consecutively talking to you.

Remember how you told me Marian always asked about me, how you hyped me up as though I’d hung the moon? 

Remember how you got after me to call her, teased that I’d be too quiet and shy to?

I asked Mum if she could dig through the house and find her number today. If she does, I think that’s something I should do. I have country-wide calling and she lost her best friend, too.

She’d be one of the few connections I have left to you. 

I wondered out loud though how I’d cope if she became a surrogate grandma and then I lost her, too. She isn’t all that far behind you.

I think I’d regret it, if I didn’t talk at least once to the sweetest and best soul you said you ever knew.

Maybe she’d come to know me almost as deeply as you.

Mum said she’s really easy to talk to.

Seventy years of friendship doesn’t just happen for no reason, does it?

God knows I need more of that if I’m ever gonna get through.

I feel like I’m hard to love, Nan, but you always made me feel - for a few hours every day - that wasn’t true.

How have I gotten so comfortable with lying?

When did I become so hollow and numb and nonchalant and come to hate my life so deeply that there’s more peace to think of dying?

Are you looking down on me disappointed and crying?

I told Mum how much it bothered me that I was never able to come out or bring another woman home to meet you. I told her we talked about gay people occasionally in a roundabout way, but it ate away at me for so damn long wondering if you’d love me the same. I wonder how it would’ve gone if we’d gotten to have a real conversation about my own life before you slipped away.

I always felt like it would have been easier if I were with someone. Love usually speaks for itself. I wouldn’t have had so many words I needed to say.

Love hasn’t happened. I doubt that it will.

_There is nothing you could’ve ever done that would have made Nan not love you, Victoria. Not a thing,_ Mum told me.

I really hope that’s true.

I hope you’re not too disappointed.

I feel like an exile of your god.

I feel like I’m slipping, stumbling, falling, failing at absolutely everything,

and the only thing I can be open about without lying, hiding, disguising,

is how much I fucking **miss** you.

How badly I need you.

How often I’m crying, even though I know you wouldn’t want me to.

**Author's Note:**

> **This work is property of its author and may not be used or replicated without prior consent.


End file.
